violence

Men, even good men, believe women lie about rape. There’s this myth that runs amok saying that some enormous proportion of rape accusations are just women lying to get attention, or revenge, or to hide their summer fling from mommy and daddy. And they believe it without question.

When male friends toss that grenade at me, I toss it back by asking if they know what the percentage is. “Fifty percent,” they’ll say, or above, depending on which MRAs their stats are coming from.

“It’s two to eight percent,” I say, and I need to remember to never do this when they’re walking or have something in their mouths, because the good ones are always staggered, and they always gasp. “But even those numbers are on the high side.”

It is frustrating to live in a society where sexual violence is commonplace, and feel helpless to stop it. Many people are so disgusted and frightened for themselves and those they care about, that they do not have the patience to wait for our culture to right itself. It is from this frustration, impatience, and usually from a sincere worry for women’s safety, that people often will try to pass along rape prevention measures that may or may not be useful. […]

Much of the safety advice that is given out is aimed at potential victims (quite often young women), that seems solid and constructive, but that largely ignores the social and societal context in which the violence happens, and also fails to take into consideration the practical realities of women’s lives.

Soulspeakout.org was born out of the need for a safe space for survivors to tell their stories. We hope that you are able to use it as a safe space to reach out to other survivors or just have your voice heard.

But my correspondents—whether they are dewy noobs just coming to feminism, advanced feminists looking for a source, or disbelievers in the existence of the rape culture—always seem to be looking for something more comprehensive and less abstract: What is the rape culture? What are its borders? What does it look like and sound like and feel like?

It is not a definition for which they’re looking; not really. It’s a description. It’s something substantive enough to reach out and touch, in all its ugly, heaving, menacing grotesquery.

Remember the RapeLay video game, written about by Melissa and Cara back in February? Equality Now has been working to persuade Japan to uphold its obligations under UN conventions with respect to material that normalises and/or promotes violence against women and girls.

A few months ago I posted an events notice for a MichFest Women’s Festival event in NYC. I screwed up big time in that original post by not including any text noting the trans-exclusionary policy of MichFest, which has excluded trans women as festival participants for many years. I apologise unreservedly for neglecting to highlight […]

I’ve labelled this post as (I) because my spidey-sense tells me that this will become a series. Here you go: [link]. Tell this cartoonist what you think of jokes about his comic’s protagonist drooling about raping disabled homeless women because “it’s hard to keep your legs closed if you don’t have any”. Hey, having no […]

AKA: Women like it, really! They say they don’t, but they do! A: I’m not joking, some people still do use this argument. Even if most of them are just trolls looking to stir up outrage, this trope is still out there needing some debunking. Potential PTSD Trigger Warning OK, let’s go through this step […]

Holla Back Australia empowers Australian women to holler back at street harassers. If you’ve been harassed or groped on public transport, playing sport, eating out, working, walking between classes, dancing the night away, walking the dog, or enjoying the beach – you have the right to feel safe and to be safe. You don’t need […]

Originally posted at Hoyden About Town The top link offered to me on Stumble-Upon for Women’s Issues is this: Through a Rapists Eyes, a page on a rape-prevention site. Unfortunately, they are propagating misinformation, pure and simple. Some of you may recognise the opening paragraphs as one of those emails that gets forwarded around the […]